


_Me and My Shadow

by glenarvon



Series: _Brilliancy [17]
Category: Watch Dogs (Video Game)
Genre: Al0ne, Digital Trip, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-13
Updated: 2015-04-13
Packaged: 2018-03-22 16:43:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3736183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glenarvon/pseuds/glenarvon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aiden takes the night off to relax.</p>
            </blockquote>





	_Me and My Shadow

**Author's Note:**

> _Idea sparked after a conversation with Cyclopz on ff.net! Thanks for that!_

[this takes place in 2013]

* * *

His Chicago is deserted around him, a silence so absolute it presses down on him and he feels like pushing through water as he sprints across the street and ducks behind the wreckage of a car. The shadow is only moderately comforting, not deep enough to hide in, but enough to trip him up every so often with the illusion of safety.

A streak of light cuts across the street on the other side of the car, stops, then turns and hesitates. The light streams past the car on either side like liquid ice. He's out of ammo, nearly out of grenades, out of _everything_ but his own hands and the weight of the extended baton in it. It's moments like this when he realises how deep his muscle memory runs. The twitch for his phone is reflexive, but nearly useless right now. There's nothing here for him to hack, the generator is still half a block down the road and he's already mapped his way there and he knows he'll need more cover than he'll get.

The light swerves to the side, dips one side of the car back into darkness and he shuffles toward it, only to freeze when another cone of light falls on him, strong enough to tear right through the feeble layer of leather and cloth on his back.

There's a pause and he _hates_ that tiny moment, it's just long enough to rip nerves to shreds and make his heart-rate jump, but it's never _enough_ to do anything about it, not hemmed in as he is from two sides and it's too far to any other cover.

_"Violation detected!"_

The ice of the searchlight turns a bloody red as he moves, instinctively trying to get out of the searing beam before it saps him of his strength. He resists the urge to bolt and run for the shadows and the meagre safety they promise, but he is still somewhat surprised he even _has_ a flight instinct anymore. Perhaps it's why he keeps playing, just to see sides of himself he's not facing out in the real world.

The pain isn't real, anyway, but telling himself doesn't make it any less of an effort to push to his feet and launch himself at the enemy. The light blinds him and he misjudges the distance. The robots just _seem_ slow and simple, but they are tuned in to him, they follow in some gravitational pull. A human enemy, he could have flanked, ducked past him and come up behind. It's harder to do this time, but it's no reason to stop, he trips the machine and it buys him a respite to sling the arm around its neck and yank the baton back, trip it and make it fall. It gargles and chokes, struggles in his grip and Aiden's never sure if he feels metal or flesh under his fingers when it happens.

The others are on him, the one from the car and two — no, three — others have diverged from their paths to surround him. He dives through the gap between them, lands hard on the cracked concrete and rolls back to his feet with the same motion. The robots turn after him, their metallic voices beating against him and the brutal light. He tosses his last EMP grenade in their centre and detonates it.

His knees feel weak and his vision is blurred, but he wastes no time. Already he sees the flashes around him, as new enemies are summoned into his part of the grid. They always appear far enough away to fool someone less perceptive into believing it's random. Aiden knows better, of course. He keeps going as his strength slowly crawls back into his limbs. His mind clears with each step he takes.

The generator beam reaches into the murky sky ahead, cutting higher than the spires of darkened skyscrapers.

Ahead of him, several cars are strewn around, but he keeps to the right, watches his enemies as they pick their way and change direction to begin to hem in again, one deceptive step at a time. It's not their speed that bothers him, its the certainty. Two from behind, and one to cut off the street ahead.

He abandons his beeline for the generator. Stoked with weapons and ammo, he could have pushed through, but like this, he's rendered too vulnerable. He draws back into an alleyway. It's passingly familiar, it's _his_ Chicago after all, even in this desolate mirror version of it.

He has some breathing space as he hurries down the alley, before the lights make the corner and at least two of them stalk him even here.

_"He will lie,"_ the voice floods the alleyway, dripping with resentment and impotent rage. _"He will hide. Find him. Punish him."_

Another flash, just ahead of him, and an enemy materialises in his path and he dodges to the side, behind a trash container. He wonders about the mechanics of the programme running all of this inside his own head. That taunting, seething voice he can't escape, even if he escapes and defeats her minions.

It doesn't hurt him, but he wonders. He's looked at the programme closely before he's allowed it to mess with his head, it knows how to draw these things from him, from inside his mind. It says something about him, no doubt, just as his choice of entertainment does.

He leans out of cover, spots the robot walking down the alley on the other side while the other two come from behind. They'll meet not far from here, but the cone of light from behind is already dangerously close and he can't stay.

He scales the container, jumps down on the other side just as the light changes from emotionless blue to searching yellow, but he's out of sight for the moment, the container between them.

If he can make the end of the alley, he can turn left, circle around and get back to the generator from the other direction. He thinks the cover might be better there, too.

Another flash ahead and an enemy appears, stands as if disoriented, then turns and walks in the same direction Aiden has been going, pretending to have some purpose other than hunting him down.

_"He did this to us. It's his fault. Find him."_

He has some theories about the story being told by the game, but he supposes it doesn't matter much, it's all in his head anyway. He doesn't quite know what his subconsciousness means by most of it. Many things are his fault, after all. He's doing a good job of avoiding punishment.

He picks up speed, though carefully so not to alert his quarry as he closes the distance between them. It's the trick, of course, he's learned it the first time he's been here, but it's still surprisingly hard to stick with it in the suffocating darkness and the dry silence of the place. But _he_ is the hunter here, he has no reason to be afraid.

He pulls up behind the robot, steps into his knee and it buckles, as helpless as they come, giving metallic sounds of pain. He smashes the baton over its head and again as it topples and lies still. He steps over the lifeless carcass even as it dissolves.

Past the mouth of the alley lies a small plaza, littered with planters and the remnants of a cafe. On the other end of the plaza, he spots the generator and stops, picking the best path without wasting too much time.

Staying in one place too long is never a good idea.

The robots he can see from here are too far away to become an immediate threat, so he just gives them a wide berth, memorises their locations and number for later.

He follows the outer edge of the plaza, between the walls of the houses and the tall planters that set up its boundaries. The last stretch is always dangerous, there never seems to be any good cover near the generators and while he commends the strategic thinking, its also a source of potential frustration and he catches himself wishing for _just one_ easy one, just to shake things up.

When he's finally close enough, he pulls his phone out and begins the hack.

_"He is a murderer."_

It's hard to argue with that.

A flash too close behind, but he only turns and watches the robot appear, turns its head away and walk a few steps away.

_"A monster."_

Really, now?

Unexpectedly, the robot stops on its tracks, turns around and heads almost straight at him. They _never_ come straight at him unless he's alerted them, their direction is always just a little off, teasing him with the option of evasion. But he doesn't feel like running. He's been circling this generator for too long.

Aiden stops the hack for the moment, jump starts to the side. It isn't quite far enough and he's too slow coming up from the crouched position. The light turns bloody instantly, but he pushes through, jumps the robot from the side, grips his arms and brings the baton down on it. A human would break, Aiden doesn't know what damage it does to this machine thing. It reacts beautifully, however, whimpers and bends. It's friends are already running for him, but they won't be able to save it. He smashes the baton into the small of its back and the thing crumbles, twitching, and goes still.

He runs to the right, away from the others and pulls the phone again, starts the hack and he thinks he can feel the progress bar through his thumb. The planters over decent cover and robots are slower than him — though never quite as slow as they seem — he can hold out to the end and when the generator goes, he's won.

A red beam finds him from somewhere behind and he loses the moment, swirls around and…

… the world frazzles out.

* * *

His phone buzzed by his ear.

"Dammit!" Aiden snapped. Water splashed from the bathtub as he came up a little too fast. He groaned and settled his head back against the soaked towel behind his neck.

After a moment, he pushed the washcloth up high enough he could see from one eye, trying to steal a glance at the phone without having to otherwise move. At least it wasn't an alarm, no need to hurry.

Steam wafted through the bathroom, heated warmth resting on him and it was far too comfortable to move, but as the minutes stretched, he realised he wasn't going to relax while he didn't know what was going on.

Growling quietly, Aiden reached for the phone and held it up, leaving wet prints on the screen as he thumbed through the menu.

A few days ago, someone new had moved into an apartment on the floor below him. He was an IT engineer working at an online security startup. Cracking his private system was more of a side projects for Aiden. He'd quickly ruled out the possibility the man was a fluke or possibly some kind of agent placed close to Aiden's primary home, but his story was coherent enough. Still, an IT guy working in internet security probably had a few interesting things on his computer.

A few hours ago, Aiden had put a password cracker to work. He hadn't really expected the brute force method to yield any results so quickly, but there you go. Preaching was one thing, sticking to your own strict security regime seemed quite another, even for IT professionals.

Aiden logged in and took a short walk through the man's files. He found a folder with unfinished projects he could look at with more leisure and a handful email exchanges with his colleagues that could come in useful. The man's browsing history was fairly dull, even his porn habits seemed painfully mundane. He'd dig a bit deeper later, Aiden decided, maybe something more useful was hidden away somewhere.

He transferred the phone into his other hand and reached out of the bathtub to the bottle on the floor. The glass was cool, slippery from condensation as he brought it up.

He took a sip as he opened up the programme code for the Digital Trip. He'd been experimenting with various patches for a while, never anything substantial, not while he didn't have the time to really learn the intricacies of the programme, but this was a minor change. He gave the programme access to his musical library. Al0ne used a sound frequency to block out outside noise and create the preternatural silence within the game, but he wasn't in the mood for that.

He gave it a dry run before he let it loose on his brain waves, but the analysis reported nothing abnormal. He emptied the bottle before the beer was hopelessly stale and set it back down. A last scan of his patch and he booted up the Trip, felt the slight sense of vertigo as he was pulled under slowly. He tucked the washcloth back over his eye and settled back comfortably.

* * *

_I won't deny it, I'm a straight ridah_

_You don't wanna fuck with me_

His Chicago is still deserted, but the imposter with the metallic voice only comes through distantly now. He imagines her being even more chastising and incensed now, shouting against the storm of music Aiden's brought with him this time.

Aiden steps through the barrier, the sunlight falls away behind him and artificial darkness beats up against him, desperate to push him out before he can do any damage but it's too late. Blue flashes ahead of him and he considers for a long moment as the robot's searchlight wanders over the ground, advancing on him.

He uses the shadow of a wrecked car, circles back around until he's behind the machine and stalks it quietly and he comes close enough to leap.

**Author's Note:**

> Real artists steal… right, so the entire bathroom thing happened because I rewatched Fight Club the other day. Also, one of the things that make Aiden interesting to me (I mean, everything about him makes him interesting to me, but that's beside the point) is that he seems quite ordinary in many ways. Like he's way past twenty-nine, he's not particularly good-looking, he can't do any weird acrobatics, he can't take a lot of fire in a fight… He's just some guy, being normal.  
> It's extremely difficult to fake musical taste. I have no idea what I'm talking about. Alas, Aiden likes to pick his own preferences. He's listening to Tupac's 'All Eyez On Me'.
> 
> * * *
> 
> **Revised on** _19/May/2016_


End file.
